Category Archives: History

History, Poems

A Sure, Steady Hand

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Today is the anniversary of the day in 1307 when William Tell famously shot an apple off his son’s head at the command of a brutal overlord,  Albrecht Gessler.

I know in the story this was all was done under duress and that Tell and the boy had no opportunity to object. But I still think that as the target of a foolish stunt, no 21st century child would stand idly by (literally) while dad lifts the crossbow.

An unquestioned faith in ol’ pops’ abilities is rare these days, at least in terms of modern popular culture.  There are very few father figures on TV who are reliable and/or competent in any area. Doofuses and failures, most of them.

So if the William Tell story unfolded today, I suspect there would be some push back from the offspring. And as long as we’re totally making things up, I am also quite certain the argument, if it happened, would be framed in a lame verse.

My son, stand straight with posture firm.
Don’t slouch or wriggle, lurch or squirm.
I’m widely known as quite the shot
and if you stay upon your spot
I’ll cleave the apple quick and clean
where it is balanced on your bean.

My father dear, though you mean well
this plan of yours, I think, doth smell.
It’s hubris, pure. And pride to boot
that makes you think that you can shoot
a fruit that’s perched upon my gourd.
One flinch by you – I’m with the Lord!

Hold very still, with eyes tight shut,
Before you can say “Hey, dad, what …?”,
I’ll put an arrow to my bow
and aim the missile, then let go
and through the apple it will flit
Before you can say “Holy split!”

I don’t think mom would be too pleased
if, as you let that go, you sneezed.
I know you sometimes scratch an itch.
I’ve seen you sleeping, dad. You twitch!
You blurt, you fart, it’s all abrupt.
Am I to die if you erupt?

Don’t worry, son. I’m cool and calm.
My mind’s at peace. My soul’s a psalm.
I’ll shoot it straight and true, I know.
We shouldn’t over talk it, though.
Just know that I’m not known to fail
When fruit, with arrows, I impale.

Are you a good shot?

History, Songs

Don’t Fence Me In

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Today is the birthday of famous movie cowboy Roy Rogers, who we think of as a fixture of the wide open western expanse even though he actually entered the world at Cincinnati, Ohio.

Though it’s hard to imagine two forms of entertainment that are more out of fashion today than musicals and westerns, Rogers excelled at both. His work with the ensemble Sons of the Pioneers is a source of fond musical memories for me, although I don’t have many warm feelings towards hay, saddles, guns or cactus.

Born Leonard Slye, Rogers was a Hollywood creation, although he did seem to play well with horses. In this video clip, Trigger steals the show and Roy lets him, which strikes me as both kind-hearted and practical.

Though I didn’t think this was allowed, you can watch full Roy Rogers movies on Youtube, where there’s something for everyone. In “Sunset in the West”, Roy and Trigger deal with a hijacked train that’s full of guns, which ought to have equal appeal to those rail-loving new urbanists and the N.R.A., though for different reasons.

There aren’t many celebrities today with the kind of broad appeal that can span the political, musical, sartorial and behavioral boundaries we draw around ourselves. Roy Rogers had that quality, though I’m sure his solid relationship with Trigger helped.

Who is the Roy Rogers of today?

History

Vote, Rinse, Repeat.

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Today’s post is actually a partial re-posting of Congressman Loomis Beechly’s glorious 2012 Election Day address, which catapulted him into the slightly brighter spotlight of extremely localized acclaim.

I’m repeating it because Congressman Beechly often repeats himself, except when he’s saying something so completely off the wall and unexpected you have to wonder about his sanity.

The address is historic primarily because it drew an all-time Trail Baboon high water mark of 141 comments – mostly the result of Baboons using the response section to hang out and do “live blog” commentary with each other about the returns as they came in.

Here’s how it looked:

Screen Shot 2014-11-02 at 9.50.26 AM

I try not to tell you what to do, but if you think reviving that plan is an appealing idea, act like a free American and follow your heart.

Here’s the Congressman’s post: 

Greetings, Valued Constituents and Miscellaneous Voters,

My apologies for this message directed at a mass audience on what is a day of personal choice. I want to urge you … YOU, specifically … to go to the polls and vote your conscience today, even if you don’t have much of a conscience to begin with.

We must all make the best of whatever meager resources we’re given.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing! Those who have tossed away their franchise in an expression of political ennui are the most heartbreaking and miserable of creatures. Why? They have squandered their most valuable possession, and will have no right to complain for the next two years.

Think about that. Two years without complaining? I don’t know anyone who can live that way!

And don’t be like Hamlet, who was an undecided voter right up to the end because he couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than two seconds.

Don’t believe me? Who could forget his famous Polling Place soliloquy?

To vote, or not to vote. I’m still an equestrian!
The weather is colder than a frozen scupper
that wheels barrows of contagious portions
and gendarmes against a tree of bubbles.
And through composting, befriends them.
or by proposing, spend them: a guy, asleep
No more; and not a peep, of our lost weekend!
The smart fakes, and the cow’s unnatural socks.
They flash that hairdo! ‘Tis a constipation
without to be wished. a guy’d die to sleep,
and sleep, purchase a Dream; Sigh. There’s the tub!

I wish I understood Shakespeare. That was mostly gibberish to me, pretty much in the same way politics is nonsense to a lot of ordinary people. But not understanding what is going on doesn’t keep me from seeing a Shakespeare play every now and then. So go out and vote, even if it leaves you feeling like poor Hamlet – like you need to climb into the tub and wash it off at the end.

Sincerely,
Your Congressmen
Loomis Beechly.

That’s pretty much how I remember Beechly’s address from two years ago, but edited, enhanced, and with the highlights polished up a bit – much in the same way candidates refine a stump speech to get a response from their loyalists.

It’s a technique that works great for most politicians right up to the moment the speech becomes stale and tired and the exhausted candidates get bored. At which point we place half of them in office to continue on the same cycle for several years.

What does Election Day mean to you?

History

Just A Fragment of Your Imagination

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The news has been too full of war, disease and baseball.

Fortunately, the mystery of Amelia Earhart is always there to distract us when things get a little tedious. And this week the plot thickens with the revelation that a fragment of aluminum that was discovered 23 years ago is pretty much almost certainly identical, nearly, to a piece of metal that was attached to her plane to cover a window that had been removed during a stop-over in Miami in the weeks leading up to Earhart’s disappearance.

Fascinating.

The aluminum was found on a coral atoll called Nikumaroro in the South Pacific, about 400 miles from the place Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were really trying to reach. The theory is that Earhart and Noonan managed to land and were able to send distress signals for a succession of nights until the plane was washed into the sea, where it may still rest, submerged but largely intact.

And if by chance the attention drawn to this battered metal shard should bring a few investors forward, particularly some who have exceptionally deep pockets and would like to finance the next Nikumaroro expedition in the summer of 2015, well, so be it.

If it turns out that the Earhart mystery is really about to end, my condolences to all the people who believed one or more of the vast assortment of other fantastic, fabricated fates for our “First Lady of the Air” – that she survived and somehow lived out her days as a suburban housewife in New Jersey, that she was captured by the Japanese and became Tokyo Rose, or that she was abducted by aliens and still rules a distant Earth-like planet.

The truth is precious, but often boring. That’s what makes imagination so special.

Last call for improbably Amelia Earhart scenarios! Going once … going twice …

History

Waves From Grain

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The current news is full of fear and paranoia about the Ebola virus, and of course it is a valid concern but still not the most pressing immediate threat to one’s life and limb.

The sad truth is, any number of unlikely occurrences happening in the right order at an unfortunate time can conspire to quite quickly usher you off the planet. Take, for example, this day in 1814, when a host of people died in the undeniably tragic and yet weirdly delicious sounding London Beer Flood.

Enormous pressure inside a large vat of fermenting porter burst some iron hoops that kept the barrel together, causing other large casks to explode in a chain reaction that flooded an impoverished neighborhood. Eight were killed, mostly women and children in the surrounding buildings and streets.

I suppose this was a time and place where neighbors had little to no influence over the business ventures that took up residence in their midst. Some were probably glad they had a brewery on the block, rather than something truly dangerous and repugnant, like a slaughterhouse. Drat the luck!

In one possibly made-up account of the tragedy, flood survivors taken to a hospital caused a stir because they reeked of beer. Other patients, unaware of the reason for the sudden introduction of such a heady fragrance into the atmosphere of the infirmary, became indignant because they weren’t also receiving the same medicine that others were getting – in what smelled like mammoth doses.

I don’t think being a doctor has ever been easy.

What’s your favorite medication?

History

Up In A Plane!

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Much has been made of recent security lapses surrounding the President of the United States and his family. The modern presidency is a luxurious cage, and anyone with the funding and the fortitude to get elected must willingly climb inside for their own safety. We expect that the people surrounding the President will anticipate every possible threat and will act with integrity to head off a calamity.

But it used to be different. Example: today is the anniversary of the day in 1910 when another great landmark in the history of Presidential security occurred – in what appears to be a “what the hell” moment of exuberance, sitting president Teddy Roosevelt decides to let some guy take him up in a plane.

Really. And there’s video.

Imagine any other President deciding to do this while in office. In an age where we weld down the manhole covers so the chief executive’s motorcade can pass over them unmolested, letting the POTUS go for a joyride in some relatively new piece of technology is unthinkable.

Theodore_Roosevelt_and_Archibald_Hoxsey_(1910)

Doing this cemented another milestone for T.R. – he became the first U.S. President to fly. And seeing him in the video as he climbs through the bracing wires between wings so he can settle, uncomfortably, into his seat, makes me wonder if he also became the first exasperated American air traveler to ask “Why is this so uncomfortable?”

Those deep, ground-challenging dips at the end of the flight are breathtaking even today. No aircraft should have its nose pointed ground ward at such a steep angle.

Within three months, Roosevelt’s pilot, Arch Hoxsey, would be dead.

In an air crash, of course.

What do you remember from your first airplane ride?

History, The Baboon Congress

Miles

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Today’s guest post comes from Chris Norbury.
Chris blogs at A Neo-Renaissance Writer.

This is my good friend, Miles.He's reached the age where he's comfortable about his appearance

He’s got Japanese roots, but was actually born in Georgetown, KY. He was named after Miles Davis, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.

He's reached the age where he's comfortable with his body.
He’s kind of blue, and he’s reached the age where he’s comfortable with his body and his looks

Miles has visited each coast, been to Canada several times, and almost been to Mexico. He’s traveled nearly the equivalent of a one-way trip to the Moon. He’s gotten a few bumps and bruises along the way, suffered a few minor internal ailments, but otherwise has aged pretty darn gracefully for being 23 years old.

He's an interesting person with many and varied interests.
He’s into the Neo-Renaissance thing, and has many and varied interests.

He’s been a good friend for all the right reasons: faithful, reliable, and dependable. He also gets along great with my wife since he spent a lot of time with her the first half of his life, and they’re still on good terms with each other. He can keep a secret better than anyone I’ve known (when we’re out together with the windows closed and I rant about bad drivers or outrageous/stupid/ignorant things I hear on the radio). Based on a few close calls we’ve had, he’s always been willing to put himself in harm’s way to protect me.

He's Health conscious but also has a sense of humor
He’s health conscious, but also has a sense of humor.

Sometime in the next year or so, Miles will retire, hopefully to a good home that will take care of him in his last years. I don’t want to be the one to pull his spark plugs, so I’d like to either sell him to someone who will use him gently for his remaining time, or donate him to the radio station he learned to love after all those years, Minnesota Public Radio. His favorite show was Leigh Kamman’s The Jazz Image. Yeah, late Saturday night drives home while listening to all those great jazz tunes were some damn good times together.

He's interested in politics and able to discuss it in a civilized manner
He’s interested in politics.

His politics were always a little bit different, but he’s a live and let live kind of car, so that’s cool.

He's a long-time supporter of worthwhile charities
He’s a long-time supporter of worthwhile charities

But his heart (engine) has always been good and true, and he believes in helping those less fortunate, (maybe getting a good meal out of the deal after taking the Big Brother (owner) and his Little Brother up to the BWCA for some canoeing and camping.)

When he slowly rolls to his final stop, I hope he’ll be c(a)remated rather than tossed into an open graveyard with hundreds of other rusted old heaps. Better to recycle his useful elements ASAP than have him slowly decay and pollute the ground water.

As his final day approaches, I find myself feeling sad and melancholy. I took him for granted for the first twenty years or so. I always assumed he be there, start on command, get me where I wanted to go fast and efficiently. I would let him go weeks, even months without a shower; throw trash in his backseat; let dust, dirt, mud, and a multitude of food crumbs accumulate in his cracks and crevices; and delay taking him in for regular checkups. At least I made sure he got his annual or biannual oil transfusion. I wasn’t nearly as good a friend to him than he was to me.

He loves to visit wild places in order to connect with his spiritual self, and he's a firm believer in self-reliance and personal responsibility.
He loves to visit wild places, and he’s a firm believer in self-reliance and personal responsibility.

Yet Miles never complained, always had a smile on his grille, always purred like a tiger when I started him up each day. But only rarely would I pat him on the roof and say, “Nice job, Miles. That was a bad storm you just got us through,” or “Thanks for a smooth ride.” Even though I ignored him a lot, I was grateful for every safe trip we ever took, even the shortest trips down to the local convenience store for gas, or bananas and milk, or a late-evening summer ice cream run.

So thanks Miles. For everything: Every new mile. Every new road. Every new town. Every new vista. And all the old ones, too.  I’ll miss you when you’re gone. Ashes to ashes, rust to rust.

My question: Why do we anthropomorphize and befriend inanimate objects such as cars? Tell me about your most trusted and rusty friend.

History

Pranksgiving Fest

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It’s not hard to accept the idea that man’s earliest attempt at humor was a fart joke. It feels right. But the second was probably a prank of some kind.

I have never been a fan of the game some DJ’s play when they make and broadcast prank telephone calls because it seems so unfair to make a show out of mocking strangers. This is odd because I did morning radio for more than 25 years. Fooling any unsuspecting person for your own amusement was a base element in the chemical profile of your standard wake-up show back then. Still is, probably.

And even though I didn’t care for elaborate put-on and almost never committed one, some of my fondest memories from those years are connected to one April Fool’s morning when we said, as straight-faced as possible, that we had been knocked off the air by a technical difficulty and did not know when we could get back on. The size of the problem was unknown, I told listeners, but we were trying to plot the extent of the outage by sticking pins to a map on the wall.

“Call the studio,” I said, “if you can’t hear us.”

The audio is still online, here. We start the prank about 100 minutes into the show. Honest.

We did get quite a few calls from people who got the joke immediately and wanted to participate in the fun. But among the respondents was one clearly confused older woman who couldn’t understand why we were talking about being off the air when she could hear us as clearly as ever a the intersection of Winnetka and Bass Lake Road.

A friend called me at my desk a few hours later and in a make believe voice chastised me severely for “… publicly humiliating my elderly aunt! Have you no decency, sir?”

I was halfway through my apology before he ‘fessed up. The woman was not his Aunt, but he felt a little sorry for her even though he, too, laughed at her bewilderment. Now it was my turn to be mocked. The tables had been turned, and appropriately so.

All this came to mind when I saw that Alan Funt’s son Peter was at it again, shooting new episodes of the classic TV prank show, Candid Camera.

In a commentary for the New York Times, Funt confessed some trepidation at trying to fool savvy moderns. He said “I worried briefly that people are now so tech-savvy that some of our props and fake setups wouldn’t be believed. Instead, we found that the omnipresence of technology has reached a point where people will now accept almost anything”.

And really, isn’t that the lesson of the past 20 years? Virtually any crazy thing is possible. Such as:

Can you tell a convincing lie?

History, The Baboon Congress

The Boomgaarden Orchestra

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Today’s guest post comes from Renee Boomgaarden, aka Renee in North Dakota.

Sometime in 1925, the residents in and around Ellsworth, MN were abuzz with the news that Okke Boomgaarden had bought a $3000 accordion for his daughter, Amanda.

Okke was my great uncle, the fifth oldest of the sixteen children in my grandfather’s family. Okke was, officially, a farmer, sort of like how Don Corleone was, officially, an olive oil importer. Okke made his money bootlegging, and his barn was used for dances, not livestock. Okke had regular dances in the barn. He provided refreshments, at a cost, and members of the family provided the music.

Screenshot 2014-09-02 at 8.15.09 PM

Family historians talk about my grandfather and many of his siblings having a natural aptitude for music. All were self taught.

  • Great Uncle George learned to play the fiddle when he was 16.
  • Great Uncle Albert also played the fiddle.
  • Great Uncle Herman was a noted left handed banjo player.
  • My grandfather played the cello.
  • Great Aunt Amelia played the piano.
  • Other family members played the accordion.

In the years before the First World War they were know as The Boomgaarden Orchestra and played for dances, weddings, and harvest festivals in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota.

After the war, they changed their name to Mandy’s Jazz Kings, and played in Okke’s barn, joined by Okke’s children Georgie on fiddle, Jake on saxophone, and Amanda and Mabel on the accordion.

My father remembers going to some of those dances when he was a little boy, driving to Ellsworth with his parents in their Graham-Paige automobile. I wish I know more about the music the Jazz Kings and the Boomgaarden Orchestra performed.

I wish I knew what happened to my grandfather’s cello. Until I researched for this post, I never even knew he played a string instrument.

Okke died of a heart attack in 1928, and the dances stopped soon afterwards. The older members of the Jazz Kings had their own farms and families to care for and couldn’t play with the band anymore. Okke’s sons Georgie and Jake kept playing, changing the name to The Georgie Boomgaarden Orchestra. Georgie and his band played in the towns around Ellsworth until the 1970’s.

Screenshot 2014-09-02 at 8.14.53 PM

The Depression hit everybody hard. At one point, Jake’s saxophone needed $12.00 worth of repairs, but he didn’t have the money to fix it. The local doctor intervened and paid for the repairs. He had just built a night club in Ellsworth and needed musicians to play for the dances.

My grandfather felt it was important for my dad and his brother to have some kind of music training despite the tight finances. Grandpa drove Dad and Uncle Alvin to Luverne once a week to practice with a drum and bugle corps. This group was comprised of sons of World War I veterans, and you can see them in the photo at the top of this page. Dad played both drum and the bugle – he is the third boy on the right in the back row. He can still play his bugle, and has two of them in his bedroom.

Renee played bass clarinet for Concordia.
Renee played bass clarinet for Concordia.

My children and I are the current Boomgaarden music amateurs along with my husband. Husband plays the cello, guitar, harmonica, and piano. He also sings. You can see me playing my bass clarinet in the Concordia College Band in 1978. Daughter plays the violin, French horn, and piano. She sings in college. Son played the trombone and sang in college. He currently sings in the church choir. I drafted husband to join the handbell choir. He drafted me to sometimes play the bass guitar in a very amateur gospel/rock and roll group.

Why do we do these thing? I have no idea. Maybe Okke will explain it to me someday in the Hereafter.

Who has the talent in your family?

History, Songs, Travel

On The Road, Again

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In the past on this page we have discussed where we are from and where we’ve lived. Baboons can be both wanderers and stay-at-homes. It can be a surprisingly tough mental exercise to walk back through your biography to list the places you’ve lived in the proper sequence, and for how long at each stop.

Likewise, each state of the union has a specific history of who happens to live there and from whence they came. Only demographers and other numbers geeks can find much enjoyment in looking over the columns of figures that tell those stories.

For the rest of us the info-graphics experts at the New York Times have developed 50 fascinating charts that display the data as strata – a cross section cut from each state’s census showing the last century’s changes in where residents were born.

Some of the curious things that appear:

Based on your personal history, you can get a sense for how common (or uncommon) you are in your current environment when birthplace is the sole yardstick. Back in the 1970’s I was part of a sliver (3%) of Illinoisans born in the Northeast. Now in Minnesota, my kind are still a rarity at a mere 2%. Rare as hen’s teeth. Precious as gold.

Sometimes we have to go out of our way to feel special.

After looking at this I’m left with the impression that people accumulate in specific places based on a variety of economic forces that drive them there. Because certain individuals may be rooted in place while others are entirely footloose, there is a variable and distinct human geology that defines each state.

Or maybe it’s just the wind.

Where are you headed?